Stratford awarded $4,000

The Town of Stratford and the Stratford Area Wa­ter­shed Im­prove­ment Group have $4,000 to use to­wards pro­tect­ing the wa­ter­ways in and around the town.

The RBC Blue Wa­ter Pro­ject awarded a grant to the town as part of its pro­gram pro­mot­ing stew­ard­ship and en­vi­ron­men­tal re­search by lo­cal res­i­dents, schools and or­ga­ni­za­tions.

“The Town of Stratford rec­og­nizes the tremen­dous im­por­tance of our wa­ter and is com­mit­ted to re­spect­ing this nat­u­ral re­source en­trusted to us for present and fu­ture gen­er­a­tions,” said Mayor David Dun­phy in a news re­lease. “Our staff, with the help of the Stratford Area Wa­ter­shed Im­prove­ment Group, work very hard to ed­u­cate and of­fer op­por­tu­ni­ties for youth and adults to learn more about their lo­cal wa­ter­ways in an in­ter­ac­tive and hands-on ap­proach.”

A new pro­gram dubbed the Wa­ter­ways WaterWatch­ers Pro­gram, will help Stratford res­i­dents be­come stew­ards of their lo­cal creeks, streams, ponds and wet­lands. Com­mu­nity mem­bers will be en­gaged in wa­ter-re­lated ac­tiv­i­ties such as col­lect­ing and an­a­lyz­ing wa­ter qual­ity sam­ples from lo­cal wa­ter­ways, plant­ing of na­tive trees and shrubs through­out ri­par­ian zones and par­tic­i­pa­tion in stream restora­tion along­side wa­ter­shed sum­mer staff.

Stew­ard­ship ex­tends be­yond ef­fi­cient wa­ter use; these part­ners are help­ing res­i­dents move to­wards con­tribut­ing to the re­spon­si­ble, sus­tain­able man­age­ment of this pre­cious nat­u­ral re­source. Pro­vid­ing the back­ground knowl­edge, equip­ment, train­ing, and re­sources to help res­i­dents learn about their lo­cal wa­ter bod­ies will in­still a sense of pride, re­spon­si­bil­ity and long-term stew­ard­ship that will ex­tend far be­yond even the length of this pro­ject.

The RBC Blue Wa­ter Pro­ject pro­vides crit­i­cal fund­ing to a va­ri­ety of na­tional, re­gional and com­mu­ni­ty­based projects around the world. The Town of Stratford and wa­ter­shed group will con­tinue to en­cour­age more res­i­dents to par­tic­i­pate in en­vi­ron­men­tal en­deav­ours in the com­mu­nity.